Zendesk, Freshdesk or HubSpot Service Hub?

What is the best customer service software for your business? In this blog we compare Zendesk with Freshdesk, and show you what HubSpot Service Hub can do.

Choosing the right customer service software is crucial for your customers and your customer service team. As mentioned, we compare two software packages widely used by businesses, Zendesk and Freshdesk. This helps you assess which system best fits the needs of your business. Both platforms offer a range of features and benefits that partly overlap and are partly unique. The goal with both systems is, of course, to serve your customers as quickly and effectively as possible.

What is Zendesk?

Zendesk is one of the oldest customer service software packages on the market. It was founded in 2007 and is an excellent solution for phone based customer service teams that need robust calling capabilities and highly configurable solutions. The platform offers many features, such as ticket automation, self service solutions and custom configurations.

Zendesk has only recently started expanding into sales and CRM solutions. Zendesk Sunshine, as the CRM platform is called, was announced in 2018 and launched that same November. The solutions beyond customer service and support are still very much in development at Zendesk, but some prospective buyers still choose an alternative because the technology is not yet proven. Most Zendesk buyers will therefore still stick with a third party CRM system.

What is Freshdesk?

Freshdesk offers an affordable and scalable solution for customer service management with a focus on cost optimisation. Freshdesk was founded in 2010, partly due to Zendesk's rising prices, which made Freshdesk a cheaper alternative. Freshdesk also works well for collaboration on tickets between departments.

Alongside Freshdesk, they also offer other solutions that integrate easily with one another. With Freshcaller, Freshchat, Freshmarketer and Freshdesk CRM, they offer a range of solutions. If you use several of these systems, you get a unified dashboard where you can find everything. However, the customisation options are quite limited across the whole product line, and the robustness of the packages varies considerably.

What customisation options do the systems offer?

Zendesk allows you to apply customisation so you get the data your business needs. Zendesk Explore, Zendesk's analytics product, provides access to omnichannel analytics to measure customer engagement across different channels. With additional Zendesk dashboards, customer service managers can easily view, analyse and optimise team performance. Alongside Explore, Zendesk also has an add on product called Collaboration. This gives you the ability to share data with different teams across different departments. When advanced functionality is needed, Zendesk is a good solution.

Freshdesk is known as a relatively simple and intuitive tool. However, when you need more robust solutions, Freshdesk unfortunately becomes less intuitive. Customer reviews, for example, have also reported bugs and other usability issues. Customisation is therefore less common and harder to apply for Freshdesk users.

How do Zendesk and Freshdesk pricing compare?

Zendesk offers four paid pricing tiers to help prospective customers find the solution that best fits their business. These tiers are: Essential, Team, Professional and Enterprise. It is important to note that with all plans, customers pay per user, regardless of their access level. Zendesk has many add ons that are free, except Collaboration. That requires a paid plan to allow users with limited access into the system.

Freshdesk also has four pricing tiers for businesses of different sizes and needs. These tiers are: Blossom, Garden, Estate and Forest. The setup is more focused on a more compact solution that is not immediately optimised for scaling up, but that works well for a smaller customer base. Given that Freshdesk was founded after Zendesk's price changes, its pricing is generally expected to be more value driven and cost effective.

What extensions and integrations are available?

Within Zendesk's marketplace, you can find a wide range of compatible apps. With more than 1000 Zendesk integrations across 15 different categories, there is plenty available to find a solution. You can easily sort, filter and search to find, for example, the most used apps and set up a connection right away.

At Freshdesk, the integration list is somewhat smaller, with just over 500 apps across 15 categories. As with Zendesk, you can easily sort, filter and search to find integrations that fit the solution you are looking for.

Self service capabilities

Being able to make your own adjustments within the system is an important part of Zendesk. This takes the form of Guide Lite, offered as part of Zendesk's support. With scalable options for adding add ons to Guide Lite, you get powerful features and instructions to tailor your service. Think of permission management for service teams, reporting and analysis, and setup and maintenance of customer portals and content in multiple languages.

Freshdesk offers a Knowledge Base and Forums that let customers easily get started themselves. This is a standard part of the Freshdesk product.

Zendesk/Freshdesk versus Service Hub

HubSpot's Service Hub offers various tools to help you build more personal relationships with your customers.

What does Service Hub offer?

HubSpot's Service Hub offers various tools to help you build more personal relationships with your customers.

1. Knowledge Base

With the Knowledge Base capabilities in HubSpot, you can give your customers the option to help themselves. A well developed knowledge base allows your team to prioritise the toughest customer challenges, while your customers have the basics to solve their smaller issues themselves.

2. Ticketing system and helpdesk

When comparing service software, the advantages of HubSpot's all in one solutions become clear. The helpdesk and ticketing systems HubSpot offers keep your team organised and ensure priorities flow smoothly into one another. This lets you resolve customer issues faster while building a personal relationship with them.

3. Chat functionality

The live chat within Service Hub lets you connect directly with the people visiting your website. This allows you to build a human connection in real time and turn these conversations into leads that eventually convert into customers. This means you provide excellent service not only to your prospects, but also to your existing customers.

4. Feedback software

Use tools to gather customer feedback such as NPS, CSAT, CES or even custom surveys. These survey results give you insights to build a better relationship with your customers.

All in one CRM platform for a better customer experience

The Service Hub is built on HubSpot's CRM platform. This means you create a 360 degree view of your customers by connecting marketing, sales and service. HubSpot's marketplace also offers more than 500 possible integrations, giving you a complete picture of your customers' interactions across various channels. This means your customer service employee has everything to hand to provide the right service straight away.

A unique human approach

Service Hub is focused on enabling personal contact. This can be done through the knowledge base, so customers can solve the problem themselves right away, or directly with your service staff. Service Hub focuses on the customer experience at every service interaction. With tools such as NPS, CSAT and other customer feedback surveys, you gain important insights into what customers value, and you can keep making improvements continuously.

Grow your business steadily

With Service Hub, you get a platform with enormous capabilities, but with a personal approach. In other words, a platform for large organisations, but with the personal approach of a small business. HubSpot's CRM system is designed to help customers grow, and Service Hub is an important part of that. With Service Hub, you can work more efficiently with ticket automation to add a personal touch faster, with the right context. You can also coach and grow your team with tools that deliver a consistent service experience across all channels and all employees.

Customer reach and engagement without the high cost

Service Hub is a more complete package for customer reach and engagement than Zendesk. That is because it includes built in chat, calling and email functionality. This is in contrast to the paid functionality with Zendesk Support. Zendesk has advanced customisation and scalability, as long as customers pay for it. If your business wants an all in one solution, Service Hub offers a well packaged solution with robust customer reach and engagement included as standard in every package.

A unified view of customer data

HubSpot ensures your customer data across the different applications for marketing, sales and service is unified. Zendesk has only just started expanding into sales and fundamental CRM functionality. As a result, many Zendesk users prefer a third party CRM package. This means you do not get a good unified view of your customer data. Customers who want strong stability, predictability and robustness in their platform are better off with HubSpot. Service Hub includes more features in its 'core' package, so fewer add ons are needed.

Better support for service focused organisations

Service Hub offers better learning resources covering all aspects of the product compared with Zendesk. All customers receive excellent support, not just Enterprise customers. Service Hub is also easier to learn and more intuitive to optimise, reducing dependency on support. Both HubSpot and Zendesk have solid customer success programmes. Looking at the reviews on G2, Service Hub is rated 8.7/10 and Zendesk scores 8.3/10.

Switching from Zendesk/Freshdesk to HubSpot

Considering a switch to HubSpot? AddMark is a HubSpot Gold Partner and we can help you with this. Our team has experience running the migration for you, with as little disruption to daily operations as possible.

We look beyond simply 'copying and pasting' data. It is about setting up the process within HubSpot optimally from the start, so you can scale easily in the years ahead.

Want to know more?

Still not sure which system is best for your business? Feel free to get in touch with us.